A Great and Glorious Adventure by Gordon Corrigan

Philip did not object to the incorporation of the
fleur-de-lys – as the grandson of a French king, Edward was entitled to use it – but he did object to the lions, the symbol of a poor offshore island, being placed in precedence over
the arms of the great kingdom of France. In England itself, Edward’s claim was not universally approved; there was widespread distrust and indeed hatred of France, and Parliament had to enact
a statute saying that in no circumstances, now or ever in the future, could any Englishman be subject to the laws of France.
    Although Philip had no intention of meeting the English army in open battle in northern France, fighting was going on in Gascony, French forces were besieging English castles in the Agenais, and
they were active at sea too. Between 1337 and 1339, Rye, Folkestone, Dover, Harwich, Plymouth and the Isle of Wight were all subject to sudden French landings, followed by a brief period of
pillage, rape and murder before the raidersset fire to what would burn and took to sea again. In 1338, they took most of the Channel Islands and held them until 1340, and
also in 1338 they captured England’s largest ship, the king’s own cog
Christopher
, along with the
Edward.
While the English responded by equally bloody raids on Le
Tréport and Boulogne, no town on England’s east and south coasts was safe from French raids, usually by galleys which, being powered by rowers, were less subject to wind or tide than
were English cogs.
    In addition, Edward’s financial situation was precarious. So far, the cost of procuring allies and sending an English expeditionary force to Europe and keeping it there had been met by
loans, mainly from Italian bankers and English and Flemish merchants, but these sources were drying up. Some loans were coming due for repayment, more recent loans went only to repay old ones, new
ones could only be obtained at exorbitant rates of interest, and the wool brought over by Manny had not fetched as much as had been hoped. Things were so serious that Edward had actually pawned the
crown of England in Bruges. He had to tilt the balance of the war in his favour quickly, and the only solution was to raise more money from England and to bring over an army large enough to force a
battle. In February 1340, a month after proclaiming himself king of France, Edward returned to England to raise funds. It was a humiliating departure: he had to agree to his queen and a number of
his nobles remaining behind as surety for the loans, and he had to promise that he would return with the money or, if without it, that he would subject himself to detention until it was found.
    In the almost two years that Edward had been out of England, Parliament had increasingly begun to question the cost of the war, laying down all sorts of conditions before granting yet another
tax. Edward met Parliament in March 1340 and deployed his extraordinary ability in managing public opinion to charm the legislators. Explaining that, if the money was not raised, then his honour
would be destroyed, his lands in France lost, and he himself imprisoned for debt, and assuring all that he had no intention of combining the two kingdoms nor of taking any action in England in his
capacity as king of France, Edward asked for, and received, a tax of a ninth. 23 This, in addition to more loans squeezed fromthe
London merchants and a levy on the clergy, would be sufficient for him to carry on the war. He did not even discuss Parliament’s conditions, agreeing to them all without argument.
    The troops being assembled to reinforce those already in Europe were a mix of men raised by feudal array, volunteers and paid professionals, both men-at-arms and archers. The reported numbers of
men in medieval armies are notoriously unreliable, and the number of English ships said by contemporary chronicles to have been mustered for the crossing vary from 147 (Lanercost) 3 to 260 (Le Baker). 4 But as the number of French